1.8.2-Kingedmundsroyalmurder
Brick!club chapters 2 and 3: of happiness, yet more lies, and the greatness that lies hidden in the horrifying I’m doing these two together because I feel like I should have more to say than I do about both of them so maybe if I write them together it’ll feel like I have enough. ~grins~ (I probably would have more to say if I weren’t tired and also drinking, neither of which alone slow my brain down this much but in combination are unfortunate.) Besides, these are parallel chapters in a lot of ways, starting with their titles (Fantine happy and Javert happy, which in French are written ‘heureuse’ and ‘content’ respectively). So, in chapter two Fantine continues to think that Cosette is there and everyone continues to let her think this. We’ve moved beyond lying by omission into flat out lying at this point, which I find somewhat distressing, frankly. Fantine’s been through enough; she doesn’t deserve to have all these people she respects lie to her on top of everything. Arguably it did make her happier than the truth would have, but they’re just lucky that she doesn’t live long enough to find them out. I’m not sure I want to speculate on how she would have dealt with the truth, honestly. Columbina talked a lot about Fantine’s childishness and meekness in this chapter. (Others might have as well, but I’m behind on the tag again. Terribly sorry to anyone else who discussed it.) I’m incoherent tonight so I’m not really gonna try adding anything to that discussion, but I’ve talked about it before and I definitely noticed it here. She’s being rewarded for silence and meekness and deliberately infantalized by the narrative. The doctor does actually have quite a good point when he says that it’s not enough to see Cosette, Fantine must actually live and in order to do that she has to rest. She’s clearly not actually better, for all that she claims/believes herself to be. But the doctor is also using his position of power over her to silence her instead of just telling the truth. Like I said, we have no idea what knowing the truth would do to her but he’s still taking advantage of the power differential between them that includes both his profession and his gender. And Fantine, in part due to potential childhood training and in part due to a desire to tell him what he wants to hear (like she did when she was appealing to Javert) apologizes and does her best to do what she’s told, though she’s too excited to be very good at it in that moment. I suppose it’s helpful that she’s too wound up to pause in her litany of questions and wait for answers, but it’s also terribly sad and I just want to shake Valjean in particular and demand to know what the Hell he was doing for those two months. Fantine thinks Cosette won’t remember her, which turns out to be true. I disagree with the statement that children have no memories, but I will point out that Cosette was what, two when she was dropped off? I don’t remember anything from when I was two. The fact that she doesn’t remember Fantine isn’t all that surprising, though I dearly wish she’d had some happy memories to cling to. (Though it occurs to me that Castle on a Cloud might be hinting towards some faint memory of Fantine, what with the lady all in white singing lullabies. I realize it’s probably just a childish fantasy, but Fantine has been so insistent here about singing lullabies to Cosette that I can’t not make the connection.) Anyway. There just so happens to be a child playing in the courtyard outside, which is all the proof Fantine needs. So she goes back to her dreaming and Valjean is just sitting there helplessly holding her hand and trying to figure out what the Hell he’s supposed to do now. And then Javert interrupts them and I’m not going to quote the description of Fantine because I’m lazy and you’ve all read it but it’s beautifully written. And we end on a cliffhanger of sorts. Chapter three does not actually resolve that cliffhanger because it takes us back in time to what Javert’s been doing and I agree with whoever it was a while back who said that they thought Hugo’s writing was at its best when dealing with Javert because holy crap this chapter is gorgeous. (Also, sidenote, Valjean now hasn’t slept for over 24 hours and the night before that he only got like two hours. This man has stamina forever and also the reason why he can’t figure out how to react to Fantine are becoming clear. He’s not only in a moral tight spot he’s also exhausted, which does nothing for one’s ability to think.) So the lawyers in Arras can’t throw the case out entirely because they need to convict someone but they also can’t convict Champmathieu because the jury won’t do it, so they send Javert to go find Madeleine and convict him instead. Which Javert is only too happy to do. (Second sidenote: the fact that the president was irritated at the way Valjean referred to Napoleon makes me laugh and I love the tiny human touches Hugo throws into his narrative.) I love how the only way to tell what Javert was feeling was this one tiny thing out of order in his clothing. It sums him up really well I think. The only indication of this inner earthquake is an incorrectly buttoned collar. Anyway, he’s fiercely happy in a way I kind of wonder if he’s ever been before. He was right and he’s about to get his man and his instincts didn’t lead him astray at all. À l’instant où le regard de Madeleine rencontra le regard de Javert, Javert, sans bouger, sans remuer, sans approcher, devint épouvantable. Aucun sentiment humain ne réussit à être effroyable comme la joie. Ce fut le visage d’un démon qui vient de retrouver son damné In the moment when Madeleine’s eyes met Javert’s, Javert, without moving, without shifting, without coming closer, became terrible. No human emotion manages to be as dreadful as joy. It was the face of a demon which had just found its damned. I love the idea that no emotion can be as terrible as joy. Certainly I know from personal experience that no emotion hurts as much as joy, if you turn it up high enough. (Seriously, try being intensely, impossibly happy for three days in a row and see how much you enjoy it by the end. Also it is somehow possible to be impossibly happy and also desperately uncomfortable at the same time and I haven’t the faintest idea how that works.) So in this moment Javert not only is of the police but he is justice. He, Javert, has avenged society by righting this wrong and bringing this man to justice and he, Javert, is made glorious by this victory and given new purpose. Also, this paragraph-long sentence is beautiful so I’m gonna quote a little bit of it just because I can. for not translating. I gave it a shot and absolutely failed to do the original justice. It’s the passage right before the single sentence paragraph that goes ‘Javert, dreadful, had nothing ignoble about him’. l’ombre redoutable de l’action qu’il accomplissait faisait visible à son poing crispé le vague flamboiement de l’épée sociale; heureux et indigné, il tenait sous son talon le crime, le vice, la rébellion, la perdition, l’enfer, il rayonnait, il exterminait, il souriait et il y avait une incontestable grandeur dans ce saint Michel monstrueux. And Javert’s ideals can be twisted but they are so strong and so inherently right that, even twisted, they retain some of their greatness. They are made terrible by human error, but even then there is still a glimmer of light in them. Hugo is going to extreme lengths here to tell us that Javert is not a bad guy at all, he’s just living according to these very rigid principles that require him to be inhuman to uphold perfectly. Because Javert is not inhuman he will make mistakes and because Javert is Javert he will not be able to bend to accommodate them. He’s misguided, not evil, and Hugo’s traced his path to this point so that we can all understand how he came to think this way. Hugo goes out of his way not to condemn him too strongly, because at his core there is something great in his ideals and he is as much a victim of the system he works so hard to uphold as anyone else, he just doesn’t recognize himself as one. Commentary Columbina THAT LAST PARAGRAPH THOUGH. Sarah1281 It would be ridiculous of Fantine to literally think that children have no memories since she herself must have some sort of memories from her childhood (she remembers she was from M-sur-M and she left there when she was ten, for example). Perhaps she means children the age Cosette was when she left her or children do not have very good memories. I can’t actually blame them for not telling Fantine the truth about Cosette even though it makes that whole scene very uncomfortable. The whole reason they’re lying to her is because she’s so feverish and close to death and they are worried that the truth will hurt her health. As we see, it ends up killing her. It’s not that they’re lucky she doesn’t live long enough to find out the truth but that if they thought she was going to live they wouldn’t have needed to lie to her and if she had lived long enough to find out the truth it would have been because of the lie. They had no idea about Madeleine’s legal troubles so what they would have expected was Madeleine going out again and fetching Cosette and if the lie about Cosette already being there saved Fantine then it would be for the greater good and since no one actually HAD to go save Cosette and they did save her in the end, I can’t imagine that she would be at all upset at them even if other people in her position might have been. If the lie was not enough to save her then she died happy and thinking Cosette was there. Why is the truth inherently better when all it would do is cause pain and, in this case, hasten her towards her death?